(From left) Amala Shankar, Mahasveta Devi, Nabaneeta Dev Sen
and Soi Samman winners Urmila Pawar and Shashi Deshpande at the inauguration of
the book fair at ICCR on Sunday. Picture by Sayantan Ghosh

“Soi Mela is a forum
for creative women in India. We highlight women’s writing, especially in regional
languages, as well as other forms of creativity like photography, painting and
sculpture,” said Nabaneeta Dev Sen, president of Soi, before the inauguration
on Sunday.

At her call, writers
flocked from across the country. Mridula Garg, who has liberated Hindi writing
from the shackles of romance and introduced irony and wry humour, came from
Delhi. From the south came Kannada writer Janaki Srinivasan Murthy who goes by
the penname of Vaidehi and poet Mamta Sagar. From neighbouring Odisha came
Jnanpith awardee Pratibha Ray, a strident voice against social injustice and
corruption. Representing the Northeast were Arupa Patangia Kalita who writes of
the downtrodden in Assamese, Thounaojam Chanu Ibemhal writing in Manipuri as
Memchoubi and Krairi Mog Choudhury of Tripura, who writes in her mother tongue
Mog other than in Bengali and English.

In the 13th year of the
women writers’ association and at the third Soi Mela, Dev Sen fulfilled what
she said was a dream of hers – hand over Soi Samman, carrying a prize value of
Rs 1 lakh. “It took us a while to get the money but when we did there was
enough to felicitate two.” The inaugural awards went to Shashi Deshpande and
Urmila Pawar.

Explaining the choice,
Dev Sen said that unlike other Indians writing in English with an eye on the
West, the Karnataka-born Deshpande wrote in English for Indians. Indeed, the
lady would later joke, “I don’t earn in dollars and pounds.” Praising the Soi
logo of a woman reading a book, she pointed out that in reading others’ works
started the process of writing. “The faint voice of Indian women is becoming
distinct over the past few decades. For years we were seen as outsiders,” said
the author of That Long Silence. “A society needs to listen to its
writers because we have something to say,” she added.

Introducing the Marathi
author of the poignant autobiography The Weave of My Life, Dev Sen
pointed out: “While the rest of us found support in our formative years, Urmila
came up from a place where society was trying to put her and her people down.”

Pawar’s words, simple
yet strident, held the mirror up to what it meant to be a Dalit. “Women of our
earlier generations have survived by picking up undigested seeds from cowdung
and making rotis of them. One found a human tooth amid the food she collected
from the leftover dumped at the streetside. Yet hunger made her carry on
eating. My father made my mother promise that she would educate her five
children even if he died. She kept her promise by weaving baskets which I sold
door to door. She could not fight the insults hurled at her, so she wept to let
people know what happened. Her tears were her weapon.” One had to be a Dalit to
know of the kind of sexual innuendoes that a woman would have to endure. “I
started writing pushed by this compulsion to protest the injustices I have seen
and felt.”

Hearing her on stage
was a grand old lady who has been fighting for a down-trodden tribe herself,
“head soi” Mahasveta Devi. “I can’t afford to think only of women.
I go to remote areas plagued by poverty and illiteracy. When you see children
going without food, your views change,” said the octogenarian. Keeping her
company on stage was 95-year-old dancer Amala Shankar.

The three-day event features author interactions, play reading, poetry
performances and storytelling — all by women.

A signature and a
girl’s female friend. The dual connotation of the word shoi in
Bengali found complete embodiment in and at the Soi Mela. The festival of
women’s literature in India brought together friends and colleagues from across
the country as well as their writings in the form of a book fair being held at
ICCR till Tuesday.

“Soi Mela is a forum
for creative women in India. We highlight women’s writing, especially in regional
languages, as well as other forms of creativity like photography, painting and
sculpture,” said Nabaneeta Dev Sen, president of Soi, before the inauguration
on Sunday.

At her call, writers
flocked from across the country. Mridula Garg, who has liberated Hindi writing
from the shackles of romance and introduced irony and wry humour, came from
Delhi. From the south came Kannada writer Janaki Srinivasan Murthy who goes by
the penname of Vaidehi and poet Mamta Sagar. From neighbouring Odisha came
Jnanpith awardee Pratibha Ray, a strident voice against social injustice and
corruption. Representing the Northeast were Arupa Patangia Kalita who writes of
the downtrodden in Assamese, Thounaojam Chanu Ibemhal writing in Manipuri as
Memchoubi and Krairi Mog Choudhury of Tripura, who writes in her mother tongue
Mog other than in Bengali and English.

In the 13th year of the
women writers’ association and at the third Soi Mela, Dev Sen fulfilled what
she said was a dream of hers – hand over Soi Samman, carrying a prize value of
Rs 1 lakh. “It took us a while to get the money but when we did there was
enough to felicitate two.” The inaugural awards went to Shashi Deshpande and
Urmila Pawar.

Explaining the choice,
Dev Sen said that unlike other Indians writing in English with an eye on the
West, the Karnataka-born Deshpande wrote in English for Indians. Indeed, the
lady would later joke, “I don’t earn in dollars and pounds.” Praising the Soi
logo of a woman reading a book, she pointed out that in reading others’ works
started the process of writing. “The faint voice of Indian women is becoming
distinct over the past few decades. For years we were seen as outsiders,” said
the author of That Long Silence. “A society needs to listen to its
writers because we have something to say,” she added.

Introducing the Marathi
author of the poignant autobiography The Weave of My Life, Dev Sen
pointed out: “While the rest of us found support in our formative years, Urmila
came up from a place where society was trying to put her and her people down.”

Pawar’s words, simple
yet strident, held the mirror up to what it meant to be a Dalit. “Women of our
earlier generations have survived by picking up undigested seeds from cowdung
and making rotis of them. One found a human tooth amid the food she collected
from the leftover dumped at the streetside. Yet hunger made her carry on
eating. My father made my mother promise that she would educate her five
children even if he died. She kept her promise by weaving baskets which I sold
door to door. She could not fight the insults hurled at her, so she wept to let
people know what happened. Her tears were her weapon.” One had to be a Dalit to
know of the kind of sexual innuendoes that a woman would have to endure. “I
started writing pushed by this compulsion to protest the injustices I have seen
and felt.”

Hearing her on stage
was a grand old lady who has been fighting for a down-trodden tribe herself,
“head soi” Mahasveta Devi. “I can’t afford to think only of women.
I go to remote areas plagued by poverty and illiteracy. When you see children
going without food, your views change,” said the octogenarian. Keeping her
company on stage was 95-year-old dancer Amala Shankar.

The three-day event features author interactions, play reading, poetry
performances and storytelling — all by women.

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Review of Kancha Ilaiah'sUntouchable GodbyTHE HINDU :

UNTOUCHABLE GOD; Kancha Ilaiah, Samya, Rs.350

Sowmya Sivakumar:

An uncensored portrayal of the interplay between caste, gender and religion in India.

An unwritten disclaimer to Kancha Ilaiah’s novel Untouchable God could have read:

The characters in this book may be fictitious but any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely deliberate. Which begs an additional tagline: This novel is not for faint-hearted, humourless Brahmins, especially those with an inability to laugh at themselves.

From a scholar whose books have been loved and despised, depending on which side you are; Ilaiah’s ‘fictionalised’ uncensored portrayal of caste, gender and religion and their nuanced interplay through the lives and manoeuvres of six Brahmins living in an India blistering for freedom from ‘the other’ is refreshingly non-pedagogical, yet steeped in history. It is intensely satirical and plants a giant slap on the faces of those who not only profess caste, but also those who like to believe that it no longer exists.

Ilaiah’s narrative comes alive in the stories of the slimy six — Veda Shastry of Tamil Nadu, Banerjee Babu of Bengal, D.C.Tilak of Maharashtra, Krishnamurty of Karnataka, Namboodri of Kerala and Appa Rao of Andhra Pradesh — culturally diverse zealots connected by the overarching camaraderie of being born Brahmins. As the stories unfold, Ilaiah peels off the layers of hypocrisy and strange schizophrenia that infests the world of upper castes to whom the very physical existence of untouchables is despicable but whose own existence inextricably depends on preserving the untouchables in their shit.

Whether it is D.C Tilak’s declaration (see quote) or Krishnamurthy’s and Appa Rao’s rather unsuccessful attempt to plagiarise a Dalit poet’s fiery works, the book effectively stereotypes just how devious Brahmin/upper caste minds work.

But Untouchable God is not just about an older generation of upper caste male Hindu bigots. Their relationships with, treatment and repression of women is a recurrent theme, whether through Namboodri’s sexual sambandham with a lower-caste Nair woman, the outburst by an unnamed young woman in Veda Shastry’s kitchen, the widows of Benares “who have to give themselves to the ‘priests’, their guests and friends” or the traded freedoms of an apparently poised upper-caste researcher Mala who grapples to shake off her own chains. By corollary, there are powerful characters like Sakku Bai and Saraswati and, later, references to the indispensable role of women in the American civil rights struggle, suggesting the inevitability of women’s liberation for striking at the foundations of caste.

Untouchable God rips apart hypocrisies at various levels. It mocks the dichotomous existence of thebhadralok communists represented by the lives and inner conflicts of junior Banerjee and the play-acting Gayatri Roy, just as it exposes the insidious seepage of caste into other religions in India.

The closing chapter places all these home truths on an international stage, by bringing in an African-American appropriately named Isaiah who travels to India inspired by Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi and Ambedkar to draw parallels with his own struggles with race. Of course, the book does not explain everything. The helplessness of the Dalit Ezhumalai, as he says, “do not do this thing, Isaiah, we will have to pay for it later when you are gone” contrasts with Isaiah’s own account of his family and the courageous black movement in America and questions about Buddhism are left unanswered.

The language is raw, provocative, scathing, dark, honest and firsthand. Through the lens of caste and religion, the story is actually a fine work on human behaviour in a stratified but interdependent society. At a time when Mirchpur and Dharmapuri are today’s realities, the novel is a disturbing reminder of how little has changed, amid how much. It makes us sit up, confront, laugh, question, hope, and hang our heads in shame, all at once.

Extract:…we are men of mind. Where are our hands? I tell you, our hands and instruments must be the Shudras and the lower castes. We must make them beholden to us.